The Man Worth Eternity
by Duzzie
Summary: Where Zoro and Luffy have their last conversation. Where Koby and Luffy finish a story. Even the greatest of men have an end. /Dedicated to WISHING FOR A ZORO PLUSHIE/
1. The King Of All Kings: The End

**By Duzzie**

**The King of All Kings: The End**

_Where predestination was the only foe he couldn't defeat._

**---**

Zoro watches Koby leave, eyes drowsily trailing him as a hawk's eyes would travel over that of another animal with the potential to interrupt its hunt. He listens to Luffy's subtle challenge, which is also quite obviously blunt, because that's the way Luffy does things.

He's on the borderlines of exasperation and pride and probably more than a little bit of anger, because really, Luffy's such a _fool_.

Koby is a good kid with a good heart and a good chance of becoming a strong enemy. Zoro's rational enough to be wary of this knowledge. He's halfway to berating Luffy and making him realize what, exactly, he's creating, when Luffy turns to him.

For a moment less than a millionth of a second, his face is grim and tight and _hollow_. And then it's not, just as if it never had been. Again, he's all grins and encouragement with a pinch of excitement. As always, he's strength and sunshine and dreams. But that break, that small wrinkle in time is enough to set something heavy in his heart. Something a little bit like worry and a lot like fear, only, as his captain's first mate and the World's Best Swordsman-to-be, fear is not allowed. Fear cannot be accepted, and so he ignores it, glances a few seconds too long at his captain and then turns.

By the time he does, Koby's back is less than a speck in the distance—barely recognizable—but looking back at him gives Zoro the sudden urge to be sick, a sudden urge to kill whatever it is that he can _feel_ is a threat. His hand twitches at his side and his swords sing. But Luffy turns and walks away, and acknowledging the silent order, so does he.

He doesn't sleep peacefully for a while after that though, sometimes choosing to watch Luffy snore and breathe and _live_. There is some deep instinct in Zoro telling him to savor this while it lasts. It's so deep, however, that he doesn't hear it. Just as he doesn't see the half-lidded eyes--and if he'd seen, he might have caught the guilt, regret, resignation? in them--that watch him as he finally drifts into an uncomfortable sleep in an uncomfortable chair.

It takes a few days and a few nights and a few weeks to push the feeling back down, but he does.

When he wakes up after the fight with Kuma, he doesn't wonder why he's still alive even though he should be dead (and it's different this time, because there have been many times when he should have died, but this time, he was really supposed to _die_). 'You can't replace the life of a dead man,' his swords hum sympathetically, but if there has ever been a time when he has not heard them speak, it is this time. If there would ever have been a time where he would have ignored them, it would have been then.

And the signs come, and the signs go, and the years, slowly, slowly pass by.

It's an eternity of time and happiness and nakama later—suddenly it doesn't feel like it was enough—when, one by one, dreams become reality becomes nothing becomes everything. And then they're left alone; the Pirate King and the World's Greatest Swordsman. He thinks it'd still be enough if it weren't for the fact that when he stands next to this man, he has never felt such a loss; such an empty loneliness before. It shouldn't be this way. They should be happy, reliving stories of their past while drinking heavy liquor with their nakama and racking up their debts to the woman-devil. They should be together, but people move on and the world changes and dreams eventually mean nothing. But he takes that thought back almost as quickly as it comes because that thought is too painful. His captain is made of dreams, and what are they without them?

"Zoro," Luffy says suddenly, breaking him from his thoughts. They're on a cliff high, high above the sea and something in Zoro knows Luffy isn't happy looking down on it; not being in it. And he's right. When it comes to Luffy, he is always right.

There is a breeze. It's strong enough to cause his bandana to twist and dance in the currents, but he doesn't notice, instead opting to watch as his captain's own cloak is tossed about like the mass of black dreams it is. He wonders if in another world, his captain is wearing red, not black, and laughing as if he were still a kid and still on Sunny and still dreaming. But it doesn't really matter. The idea is trivial and fleeting as most of his thoughts are these days; in his head one second and out in less. Maybe it's age. Maybe it's resignation.

"Yeah?" he finally replies, looking away into a blue future that's not really there.

Luffy lowers himself and sits down. They aren't equals. Not really, at least. Luffy has always been something more than Zoro, something greater (and he wouldn't have it any other way) but being next to him, standing side by side, head to head, is something that he has always treasured. That place next to his captain is something that has always been important to him. But that place, though still his (always his), feels crowded now.

He stays standing because there is something pulling on him, on his heart and lungs and head. He looks down at Luffy and feels as if Luffy is no longer there. For the first time in many, many years (memories, lives, minutes, towns) he is afraid. "I know a secret."

'A secret,' he thinks. 'The definition of a secret is something hidden. Something hidden is something I don't know. Something I don't know about Luffy…something I don't know about Luffy is trouble.'

"What?" he says, feeling sick.

"Actually, I know a lot of secrets, but this one …this one I've known longer than anything." For a moment Luffy is seventeen again and smiling and living and _there_. "Do you understand yet, Zoro? Do you know it?"

He doesn't move, doesn't say anything because there is nothing to say. He doesn't know what Luffy's talking about, doesn't know and it feels like he's let him down somehow. So he tries to think, tries to think of every last thing that Luffy has ever said or done but can't find it. Can't find it.

"It's okay if you don't, Zoro. Not many people know it, I don't think. Grandpa does, but, he would, wouldn't he?" he asks rhetorically, voice carried away on a breeze.

"Luffy?" and then he is being embraced. It is dark and warm and so _un_-empty that he's not sure if it's really happening. Here is his friend, here is his life, here is his captain again.

"Sometimes I'm afraid, Zoro." And even though he doesn't know what Luffy's talking about or what he's going to do, he puts his hand on the man's shoulder and looks him in the eyes. It isn't hard at all to follow him, blindly or not, into the unknown. It never has been.

"I'll follow you anywhere, Captain."

"…I know."

And then Luffy turns and leaves. Their room is cold that night and Zoro doesn't sleep. He tosses and turns while the lamp on the table slowly dims until even the last valiant effort of the flame is snuffed out and blackened.

The Marines attack them the next morning and Luffy is dead within twenty-four hours of their last conversation. They're two of the strongest men in the world, but aside from making strong comrades, Luffy always had the ability to make even stronger enemies. They both fight well and Zoro wouldn't really have minded going out like that, but when he looks over at Luffy's fight and sees what his fool of a captain is doing it unlocks that fear that had been hiding—growing--over the years.

He doesn't even feel it as the blade pierces his stomach, going through one of his lungs and puncturing what he's sure must be one of his kidneys. He almost hates Chopper for not being there to heal them. Almost hates _NamiSanjiRobinUsoppFranky _for being able to leave.

Zoro, with much too many wounds to still be alive, much less moving, crawls over and topples down next to him.

_Before, he would have wondered where it all began and where he could have ended it, but in his last breath, during his last fleeting thought, he wondered at which point he could have saved everything they were and everything they could have been._


	2. The End Of An Era: The Middle

**By Duzzie**

**The End Of An Era: The Middle**

_And now it's time to part, dear friend, there's no escaping fate._

**---**

Seeing Luffy again sent shivers down his spine and set a spark off in Koby that he'd never felt before.

Something restless and invincible and amazing.

So before he could stop his lips from spouting out stupid thoughts, he'd began shouting that he'd catch Luffy, he'd defeat him, and then as realization wrapped her arms around him, he'd gotten on his knees, apologizing—_even though something deep inside him didn't feel bad at all_—and feeling ashamed—_no not ashamed something else, something darker and deeper and more painful and exciting—_of himself.

But sure enough, Luffy encouraged him, and with a smile, told him they—_he_—wouldn't go down easily.

---(Some nights he remembers thinking how terrifying the person to hunt that crew down would be. He remembers hesitating, if only for a second.

And maybe months or years or decades from then, Koby would look down at the new Pirate King; eyes hollow and blood dripping off of his chin to be soaked into the ground. Maybe he'd see the man that was born for this, the man that could unite the world and destroy it and defeat him and lose to him. Perhaps he'd hold that man in his arms and cry into his shoulder and tell him how _sorry, sorry, sorry, _he was, how much he wished he could take everything back and why didn't you kill me, you could have, you could have you two could have lived and _why why why why_? And if that happened, maybe he wouldn't notice the other set of eyes, broken and knowing and dead just a little bit more because that was his grandson and the next time that happened he'd be laughing in hell, deep, deep, far, far away.

And maybe, someday, Koby will regret. Maybe, in time, he will regret a lot of things.)---

As Koby and Helmeppo walked away, high-spirited and dreams held tightly in fisted hands, that deep consciousness inside him hurt and something told him to look back. For a moment less than a millionth of a second, the vast awareness inside him wanted to die and he thought he could almost see the swordsman in the distance; thought he could almost let himself be killed. But then the feeling left and he shook it off as a hand on his shoulder appeared. They got onto the ship and he didn't look back again, didn't break his smile. Koby wouldn't understand that pain for a long, long, long _(no, too short, too short) _time.

And later that night, long after the pirate's air-born escape, Koby found Garp sitting on deck, arms crossed and eyes empty, empty, empty; a vast darkness that lead to the depths of his soul where Koby knew something was hidden, and was never really sure whether he wanted to know the secret or not.

He approached the Admiral anyway and stood next to him, looking out at the sea.

"I wonder how many things Luffy-san will do next." And with that said, the other man closed his eyes and slowly stood up. A soft, quiet breath came out of his mouth and then he turned toward Koby.

Turned toward him and looked him straight in the eyes. It was the saddest and most frightening thing that Koby ever had to go through, though he didn't know it yet (as he seemed to not know many things yet), and a lifetime later, maybe he would come to regret this encounter, just a little (as he might come to regret the countless other things).

"…I believe the right question to ask would be how much time does that kid have left to do those many things." Being a bit stunned, a bit confused, Koby's ears were filled with the silent, deafening sound of the world cracking and fate chuckling and almost missed what he said next. "How long will it be before there is nothing left?"

"Sir? I'm sorry, I don't understand." Garp gave him a sharp look and with the light reflecting in his eyes, Koby almost made himself believe that he couldn't see the emptiness anymore.

"I put my grandsons through hell to make them strong. I wanted them to be marines so they could live, but you can't escape your Destiny, Koby. That's why I'm here, that's why you're here, and that's why Luffy is not." He walked away and off the deck, whispering an almost inaudible regret, and was gone.

They didn't talk for many, many weeks after that, as Koby came to ignore the pain that had finally nestled into his being; into the core of what he was. It would still not justify anything, and he would grow just a bit older each day carrying the weight of the knowledge that he knew not much of and wanted nothing to do with.

Eventually, and as fate gave a sigh of an apology to them, they all met again, and Koby was strong, strong, strong (but never nearly strong enough) and Luffy was Pirate King and things were utterly, insanely different. 'This isn't what I wanted,' Koby thought, even though it was.

But he still felt something restless and invincible and amazing in the pit of his stomach, something that Luffy never failed to incur in him.

"Ready?" Luffy would ask and Koby would almost not recognize his empty, empty eyes, a darkness that had nothing to lead to anymore.

And so they fought. They fought and fought as Koby lost himself over and over again (because Luffy couldn't lose himself anymore, he was already too far gone) and Koby thought he knew how it was going to end by the look in Luffy's eyes.

Koby understands the secret now.

He understood as soon as he withdrew his blade and heard it make a sickening squelch of release and he thought, somewhat distantly, as if thinking it from another's mind, of a legend he had heard once upon a time about a woman named Pandora and he thought, how horrible it would be to know your own death. He thought, how horrible life would be without hope. Without dreams.

And he regrets.

_Sometimes he wakes up cold and crying, remembering a time before this one._


End file.
